Last financial year, the mint sold 4.1 million gold and silver coins to Germany worth almost $500 million.

Senator Cormann said one of the aims of the conference was to bring together Australian businesspeople, researchers and innovators and their German counterparts to discuss how to better harness new energy technology.

Dr Prinz said Germany was experimenting with energy storage and electric cars with an aim for the country to be 80 per cent powered by renewable energy by 2050.

She said there were 50 different kinds of electric cars on the market in Germany and researchers were experimenting with powering them, not with batteries but other renewable fuels.

“There is so much happening in the next 10 years,” she said.

Mr Klein said the challenge for uptake of renewable energy was not production but storage.